Murdered UWI staffer to be buried on Friday

The funeral of murder victim Marissa Edwards will take place on Friday.

Relatives said a service will be held at their John Eli Road, Freeport home at 11 am before she is buried.

The 39-year-old’s autopsy said she died of strangulation, with a copper wire, which was found around her neck. She was also beaten.

Edwards’ decomposing body was found in a drain in Waterloo on September 26. She was last seen alive on September 19 after leaving home to go for drinks with her boyfriend Simeon Roopchand, 51.

Roopchand’s body was found hanging in the Tabaquite forest on September 24. Four days earlier, his car was found abandoned a kilometre from where his body was later found.

The part-time PH taxi driver told relatives he had dropped Edwards off near her home on September 19, then went for gas before heading home. Relatives tracked Edwards’ phone and saw it last signalled from near a gas station in Couva at about 4.30 am on September 19.

Roopchand, who was reportedly not physically abusive towards Edwards throughout their on again-off again relationship, repeatedly accused Edwards of being unfaithful, relatives said.

Edwards, the mother of one, was an administrative clerk at the Department of Paraclinical Sciences at UWI's Faculty of Medicine. Both the principal of UWI, St Augustine campus, Prof Rose-Marie Belle Antoine and Dr Sue Ann Barratt, head of UWI’s Institute for Gender and Development Studies, condemned her killing.

Relatives said since her body was found, there were nightly wakes at their home.Wednesday night was the last night the family planned to host one.

Edwards' relatives said in their announcement of her final rites that she was loved by all, and thanked those who supported the family from the day she went missing and beyond.